Collecting, Painting, and playing games with transforming toys such as Transformers , Gobots , Machine Men, etc

Friday, July 4, 2014

Rest-Q the Gobot, or Delivery Man the Machine Man

In the late 80's, Australia did something interesting. Instead of Gobots, they named them the Machine Men, and to make some more money, they cast some of the Gobots in different colours. I didn't know this at the time, and for years I've had a blue delivery van which had red sirens on the roof for some reason. I eventually discovered my blue delivery van was a reproduction of Rest-Q the ambulance.

Anyway, my delivery van transforming robot has been missing a wheel for ages, and the legs have a habit of collapsing with no warning. So I decided to test what painting a transforming toy would be like, by painting Delivery Van Robot into Rest-Q the Ambulance Gobot, but with all the details you'd expect from a wargaming miniature.

So here you can see the ambulance has been recast in solid blue plastic with no stickers or painted markings. The sirens were supposed to have blue paint on them, some of the paint is still there, but has rubbed off over the years revealing the original Ambulance sirens.

Next I've painted one section white, and applied a black wash over it, bringing out the detail, and also, shading the windows.

Here I've done a bit more, and coloured in the rear brake lights too. In robot mode, you can see Rest-Q's red cross is on his chest, though like everything else, it's bright blue plastic. I've painted the sirens now too.

Started putting red stripes down the side of the Ambulance, and a red cross painted on top, sort of like the original Rest-Q.

Next are photos of the basically finished product. There's still some blue plastic showign through the gaps in the rear of the vehicle, but the rest is painted up now. I didn't realize until I painted the front window, but there's even windscreen wipers in the model. It's amazing the details you discover when you paint a toy, that one-colour plastic just doesn't show.

2 comments:

That's been turned into a really nice looking model! Good job! Will you be varnishing them or protecting them in some other way? I imagine transforming them would wear sections of the paint work on things like the arms where they tend to fold inside the model?

Yes, I'm not sure yet what to do about protecting them. I don't want to do a gloss coat, as I only tend to do things like that on windows, gemstones, etc, on minis. Maybe some sort of matte spray? But I'm worried that a protective coating might get into the joints, and make moving limbs, etc, more difficult.

So far, the only part of the model that seems to scratch is around the joint area of where the arms connect to the body. It's a bit tight when rotating the arms or folding them back into ambulance position, but the rest of the arm is fine. The model has gapping built into it, so the arm doesn't actually hit against the model anywhere, but directly at the joint, when folding.